Mamata trouble may continue till Bengal poll

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI, OCT 7. No one in the Government or the Bharatiya Janata Party really believes that the Mamata crisis is over. The Trinamool Congress chief may be back in the Rail Bhavan on Monday as Minister - on Friday, she withdrew the resignation letter submitted to the Prime Minister on September 30 - but many political observers feel that the relations between the Trinamool and the BJP, and the Trinamool and the National Democratic Alliance will continue to be rocky till the Assembly elections in West Bengal in March next.

On Friday, the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, spoke to her over telephone and promised to take a second look at the increased prices of petroleum products in three weeks, after he recovers from a knee surgery scheduled for October 10. He followed this up with a fax message along the same lines. Ms. Banerjee then announced that because of the ``written assurance'' she and her colleague, Mr. Ajit Panja, would resume their ministerial functions.

Senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office as well as BJP leaders are aware that Ms. Banerjee's all-engrossing ambition right now is to somehow win the Assembly elections and become Chief Minister. Towards this, she and her party have been holding some talks with the Bengal unit of the Congress(I). In fact, some believe that the oil price hike had come in handy for her to walk out of the Government and the NDA, and get added political advantage by giving up ministership.

The first test will come in three weeks, when Mr. Vajpayee holds his first post-surgery Cabinet meeting. Will the Government make substantial cuts in the prices of kerosene, LPG and diesel as demanded by the Trinamool (and now also by Mr. N. Chandrababu Naidu, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and Telugu Desam Party chief, whose scheme of giving 50 per cent-subsidised 10 lakh LPG connections will come a cropper with the high price of LPG)? If not, will Ms. Banerjee threaten to resign again? Or, will the Prime Minister mollify her by offering her party an additional berth as had been reportedly negotiated earlier?

Reports suggest that within her own party MPs were not too keen on breaking away from the NDA - Mr. Panja certainly appeared not to favour this idea - and if the BJP feels that Ms. Banerjee may act difficult once again, there may even be attempts by the BJP to wean away a group of her MPs. For, the BJP knows only too well, that in Bengal the political stakes for the Trinamool are very high, and that it has not much to lose. To that extent the BJP has more room for manoeuvre.

As one senior BJP Cabinet Minister said, she should know that cutting herself off the NDA would cost her dearly in terms of credibility. It is also known that Mr. Vajpayee was able to push Ms. Banerjee because even if she were to walk away with her nine MPs, the Government would continue to have a majority in the Lok Sabha.

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